Angela Merkel prepares to press the button to generate the machine’s first burst of hydrogen plasma. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government is committed to funding nuclear-fusion research as global energy needs keep growing. “This money is well invested,” Merkel told reporters during a visit to an experimental fusion reactor in the northeastern city of Greifswald, where she pressed a button to generate the machine’s first burst of hydrogen plasma on Wednesday. “Maybe this moment will once be remembered as a milestone in fusion research.” The chancellor, a physicist by training, and about 200 visitors at the Wendelstein 7-X site watched at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics control room as a video screen lit up with a bright flash. Research director Thomas Klinge said the burst was 10 times hotter than the sun. Scientists are seeking to make hydrogen fusion, which uses the atomic reaction that […]